Crime & justice

DNA Links Ted Bundy to 1974 Utah Teen's Cold Case Murder

Does this finally deliver justice or does it just feed Ted Bundy's legend?

6 hours ago·Updated 1 hour ago

DNA Links Ted Bundy to 1974 Utah Teen's Cold Case Murder

Story

Above: Ted Bundy, arrested for the killings of FSU coeds Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, in Florida, on July 27, 1978. Image credit: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

The Facts

Utah authorities announced Tuesday that DNA evidence links serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 killing of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith, whose body was found by a hunter in the woods exactly 52 years earlier. Her death had long been a cold case.
CBS News
The Washington Post
New York Post
DNA findings, considered alongside evidence of Bundy's "pattern, motive, means and opportunity," established that he was responsible for Smith's murder, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said Tuesday at a news conference with the county sheriff.
NBC News
PBS NewsHour
FOX News
The breakthrough stemmed from the killing of Laura Ann Aime, 17, which produced a DNA profile matching Bundy. Analysts used newer technology capable of separating mixed samples and compared a male-lineage profile with evidence from Smith's autopsy.
Newsweek
Newsmax
Officials said Smith's next of kin were notified, though none of them still live in the area.
CNN
Newsmax
Authorities have tied Bundy to killings in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Florida between 1974 and 1978. Investigators said Tuesday they are still working to determine whether he killed Nancy Wilcox, a 16-year-old who vanished in Utah.
ABC
Scripps News
FOX News
Utah County officials announced in April that DNA had linked Bundy to the death of Laura Ann Aime, who disappeared on Halloween in 1974. Hikers found her body about a month later in American Fork Canyon, bound and beaten.
The New York Times
FOX 13 News Utah

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

Closing the case is fully justified: modern forensic evidence, backed by pattern, motive, means and opportunity, clears away reasonable doubt. Preserved evidence gives victims’ families the certainty that old suspicions never could, and unfinished cases deserve the same rigor.

The New York Times

CNN on X

Newsweek

Narrative B

Treating Bundy as the main attraction is too narrow; true justice should be about honoring victims over a killer’s notoriety. Public attention matters most when it amplifies those systematically silenced, not when it helps Bundy’s legend grow.